LordFjord

I liked the front winglets better. The clipped in control surface looks odd (purely visual aspect). The tail-wing design looks good Btw, how did you crate that animated gif? Edit: any reason why you didn't use the shielded docking port?

"Seven" That alone was worth watching Great interview!

When people look at your Y-Wing they first probably think: WTF is that! I enjoyed it a lot, had some fun with separating the tiny plane while leaving the base on an ascent path - and try to crash into it That was awesome. Its a great fun SSTO, just no stock craft. Fjord

20th place overall, not too shabby for the Spacegull. The top few definately earned their places, grats to the finalists! We'll need some new big building challenge after this. Maybe in the 100ton+ SSTO category?

Time to get down to facts and results I guess A few words to my voting principles: - the craft should be easy to take apart and put together again. New players must be able to look "under the hood". -> minimize clipping. And with clipping I dont mean the debug menu but "putting parts inside each other" - even if its only an inside clipped octogonal stut to add a connection node to a part. The editor limitations and how to overcome them are hard to grasp for new players. - good handling in atmospheric flight - I think this is important for stock craft as mostly new players will try these. Always with SAS enabled. Good stability is always a sign for less spins on flameouts and less loss of control on reentry. If you pull up and the craft loses control, it is bad. - my probably very subjective view on the design (like/dislike?) - dV from orbit was irrelevant for me, I trust you folks that all can at least get up there - the craft should have RCS and a docking port of any kind I did some basic tests with each craft, takeoff, some harsh manovering around KSC, land again. Some I landed on the island runway (but it became too much lag for all). I flew a few to LKO. In general I preferred the bit more complex Aeris-like designs over the very simplified ones or the wing-only designs. That's just my taste. I did not have nearly as much time as I hoped for, the sheer amount of entries was overwhelming, so please forgive accidental oversights or some off-ratings. I had to downvote some craft - even when they were awesome - due to their advanced complexity or in my view unsuited design for a stock craft. Some of those would have rated a lot lot better when the challenge would have been a different one. Here are my (rather simple) notes on the challenge, feel free to take a look where your plane ended up: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jdnfrgj747dlvgy/BSC.txt Here's my top 13: 1: Giggleplex777 - R-2 SSTO 2: Batz_10K - Mako II 3: ssTALONps - ARX-6E Volley 4: Rune - White Dart 5: MiniMatt - Mallard 6: Heagar - HOTOL II c 4 7: Cruzan - BSC Bolt 8: mrmcp1 - Aeris 4B 9: Exothermos - Speedy Box 10: oo0Filthy0oo - Wholphine Hybrid 11: sploden - Aeris 4a Improved 08 12: WaRi - Peregrino 13: O-Doc - Gecko Grats giggleplex, that is one awesome machine - I just love the design. I woud have put my own plane somewhere between rank 20 and 30 (currently voted as 53rd). *hides now under a reentry-shield* Fjord edit: just took a look at the file, dropbox's display makes it look weird, best download it and open in notepad++ or something...

Well deserved And its a lovely hivemind if I may add. You know, there are communities and communities, especially in gaming. In some you get greeted with "Welcome nub i pwn you, k tnx bye" and in others, well, you can guess. Been a while since I bumped into such a helpful and positively competitive community. Somehow KSP voids the formula: nice person + inet anonymity = complete idiot

The hard part? Somehow grab your launcher, turn it and point the correct end towards the sky. This isn't easy, especially with heavy parts. How do you want to attach the next module on it? How to refuel it? Via big badass rover/crane? Your launcher is standing on 4 legs - and each is important so it doesn't fall to the side. Pray that they wont break on any critical phase (like attaching the next module, refueling), or add some redundancy

@gchristopher: cool stuff, I'm curious how you will handle the "rearm/refuel" phase. Even with Infernal Robitics support thats no easy task. @SirJoab: have you looked at my entry update (some time ago)? I know I've bent some rules and will - if at all - be the last in the list. It would make me proud anyway, even as a honorable mention.

A little sneak-peak (will do a better story-like writeup soon). This is the 1st time for me to use IVA-only views and also FAR. Surprisingly, my plane did well, reached heights of ~35km and got fast and reliably to the crash site. A small suborbital scout plane was sent out to investigate the site and take pictures. (removed the img tags to not spoil too much) Approaching http://i.imgur.com/eOkVExF.jpg Bottom camera recording evidence data http://i.imgur.com/sIeu0nh.jpg

my notes say: clipped intakes, no docking port, asymetric wings (this you can actually see in the screenshot, 1st post of this thread) You'll see the rating soon enough, I'm finally through with all craft. Just need to sort the top ~15 and take closer looks.

To answer your initial question: no, I would not use them. Half the fun of KSP is the engineering part to build stuff that works (or fails in a spectacular way) - at least for me. No offense, but this is like adding a full-auto Railgun to Quake -> cheating Go ahead, release it (I suppose its a mod). Everyone plays this game in a different way, some may want to use this. Instead, they might as well turn on infinite fuel, slap a cluster of any engine under the payload and go ahead.

I can confirm that there is something fishy with the big rover wheels. I had steering and motors enabled for all wheels. Especially when turning while accelerating, they gain higher speeds than when accelerating without steering. This usually results in the wheel breaking. For example, on my Eve rover (meanwhile a poor abandoned derelict): Going straight ahead usually goes fine, accelerating while making small turns results in increased top speed, but the gears are more prone to breaking. On flat ground this results in a 2-5m/s speed difference, which is noticeable. I also noticed the same on my Mun rover: On steeper ground, it could not climb when going straight, but when mixing that with small fast left-right steering, it could climb up also steep crater slopes. When overdoing it, the gears broke. Might be something similar as with winglets/infiniglide - or the classical FPS slide-run bug. Anyway, regarding your rover: I never had trouble with the wheels falling off. They are remarkably stable. They may bend like hell, the gears may break, but they never ever broke off their attachment. In my cases this was either directly to a big fueltank or to struts. I guess its not the gears but probably the decouplers breaking.

Had this on maybe 2 or 3 planes. Good to know, I thought it was some oversight by some builders (maybe due to last-minute changes). Restarting the game did not change it. I'll ignore missing action groups and pretend they're there. I'm using the savefile that is linked in the 1st post. I hope to finish the 1st round of testing tonight.

This sounds interesting. Gonna give it a try. I always wanted to try those IVA glass cockpit mods, so this might be the right time for a test - RP IVA view only style

Build a space bola in order to catch the Kraken once and for all.

Halfway through as well - damned its going to be tough ranking those top ~10 craft. There is also a broad mid-field and also some on the bottom of the list (which had some general issues). @Xeldrak: any news on how we should rate our own craft? When attempting to be objective, I would put my spacegull somewhere between midfield and the top10 - but I think that the own craft should be excluded from voting.

I'll make a ranked list 1-~50 with possible ties and some comments on each craft. I wont make a very scientific approach to the rating system - it will by my very subjective opinion on each and how I see it as a stock craft. A stock craft being something that is easy to learn from, easy to reverse-engineer and to rebuild - and something that actually does the job of a roundtrip to Kerbin orbit and back in one piece. We have some great SSTOs here that are brilliant by the means of construction and engineering, but they unfortunately do not fit the role of a stock craft. I have the dilemma of downgrading truly great planes because I can't imagine them fitting that role. I also won't rate my own craft (-> bottom of list). I'll leave that to Xeldrak to figure out what to do with those votes (just treat all the same).

I don't want to heat up the rating discussions and the rather complex systems some make up for it, but folks - this is all about a stock SSTO - not "who builds the best ever SSTO". Just saying, cause some seem to forget that.

Still, there are 27 voters - some might see it different or not as a showstopper. This is why its good to have so many voters - every single one has his own view on how to judge the design, the features of each craft. In the end the average best SSTO will win. Eh - winning - whatever the person wins - maybe some questionable virtual fame on teh interwebs For me, its simply the fun of building/reviewing SSTOs.

Regarding the effort to haul several very heavy pieces into orbit, dock them together, a few hundred science points per experiment are justified in my view. With much less effort, you can create several mun/minmus trips in order to max out the science tree. It's a different, but in not an easier way. A fully equipped station science mod station (ugh, what a word) is easily in the several hundred tons category.

Could anyone make a clean stock save that includes all the craft to judge (once the submissions are closed) - and post it? I didnt have the chance to do so (damned work and RL...). This would ease up the procedure a LOT - I hope next week's ime schedule permits some more insight into the crafts. And for everyone else that would be a great collection of many many kickass SSTOs.

Duna is in fact hungarian for the river Danube (which flows through Budapest).

Those Mk I plane parts contain jetfuel

My favorite science mod is Station Science and I'm a big fan of it. It adds a couple of very heavy modules (no new graphics, rearranged connected existing modules - but this is secondary in my view). It gives a purpose to space stations - other than being refuel stations or cool looking engineering showoffs. The heavy modules (10 to 40 tons) generate resources, which are consumed by lightweight experiment modules -> these work similar as existing science equipment. You can send the data back or bring the modules back to Kerbin for more science. The science yield is good, but the effort is immense - so it is balanced in my opinion. Here's something I built with it. Way too many parts thanks to the dish that serves no purpose at all - but ~500 tons of science and fuel behind it

Here goes an update for the Spacegull. I have added a link to this post to my initial entry, no need to update the 1st post. Spacegull 5 craft file download I don't know if it got any attention yet by the voters - but by all means of friendly competition - I have to do some self-promiting for this little bird of mine Spacegull SSTO for starters I understand this challenge as to build a craft for beginners, for someone who never built or flew a SSTO before. Something to show that it's possible to fly a plane to space - something to learn from. engineering 56 parts, very simple design, following a classic "plane" look with low wings instead of a delta-winged fighter. More or less a Mini-Learjet for space. I know a good look also counts. The engine choice went to RAPIERS in order to keep the transition to space easier. No stacked air intakes. There is only a single part where some craft-building-tricks were used: the rear wheel to prevent tailstrikes - placed on top and flipped down. Otherwise you can click this together single-handedly in a few minutes. It is easy to modify the design: want more fuel? strech the hull, adjust wing placement for CoL position, done (I actually did this to the initial design, as it was shorter). Want to try a different tail-wing setup? Go ahead, try it. takeoff and landing The spacegull is a good glider, it can fly at low speeds, can take off at ~60m/s. A tailstrike-protection rear wheel has been added in order to prevent sudden loss of RAPIERS when pulling up harsh. Front wheel is steerable for better ground agility, it also has disabled breaks - it should never flip on breaking. flight characteristics An SSTO for starters should be as stable as possible - during all flight phases - no loss of control or endless spins. And all this while maintaining a good agility. It has a lot more engine power as it really needs, but this makes it also a good plane to fly in low/middle athmosphere. Heck, you can use it as a stunt-plane and cruise around the buildings of KSC. I dare you to challenge it to get it out of control (with SAS enabled). I managed to do it, but it is really hard - and it stabilizes itself quickly again. Same with reentry from orbit. No fuel-pumping needed, no need to fiddle around with opening/closing air intakes. range It will get you to orbit. It leaves a certain margin of error - but you won't go to space if you completely mess up the ascent. The limited range is its only downside, but the challenge is to make a stock SSTO for starters and not an SSTO to everywhere. utility It is equipped with a small docking port on the belly. It has plenty of RCS fuel that leaves a lot of margin of error when attempting 1st dockings. It has an equal number of RCS thrusters to the up/down/left/right directions -> the craft will move in a stable way when using RSC. The gallery also includes a pic with two science pods attached to the wings as an example. action groups 0 - toggle ladder how-to goto space? Its in the craft description - basically the same as for all SSTOs. Gallery of a sample flight: This is a great and fun challenge. The resulting craft is very simple, almost too easy, but I've put a lot of thought into it. Hope you appreciate it